First Drive: Bizzarrini 5300GT 2022 Review

I always thought it a shame that the film ‘Le Mans 66’ was not actually ‘Le Mans 65’, because that was a far more interesting race. This was the Ford vs Ferrari battle everyone wanted to see. Ford had failed to break the Ferrari stranglehold the year before because its GT40 was completely undeveloped, but by 1965 they were there in force, six in total, two with massive 7.0-litre engines. Ferrrari’s response was three prototypes of its own with seven privately-entered cars to back them up. So, who would have noticed down in 24^th place on the grid a lone ISO Grifo A3/C driven by a couple of relatively unknown French drivers? It was certainly not expected to place particularly well, lumped as it was with the 7.0-litre GT40s in the above 5.0-litre prototype class. But when all of those Fords started to go wrong, the little minnow kept going and won the class, coming home ninth overall, just the 45 laps behind the private Ferrari 250LM that won.

That result was enough. Enough, that is, to provide the hook for the Pegasus Group which today owns the rights to the Bizzarrini name to relaunch the brand with a series of 24 toolroom copies of that exact car. But I can almost see your eyebrows arching north – was it not an ISO Grifo that finished that race? Well yes, it was, but by then it was wearing Bizzarrini badges, was entered into the race by ‘ISO Prototipi Bizzarrini’. It was in all meaningful ways a Bizzarrini too, indistinguishable from the Bizzarrini 5300GT. So, the names are essentially interchangeable.

The car you see here is, safety systems and rather better build quality aside, the same as the 1965 racer, to the extent that if you spec yours with a glass- rather than carbon-fibre body, it will comply with Appendix K regulations and be entitled to go race in FIA historic events.

The car is built for Bizzarrini by RML Ltd, the company founded by multiple Le Mans driver Ray Mallock in 1984 and now run by his son and fellow racing driver Michael.

If, in that super-low profile and long nose you can see elements of ‘Breadvan’ Ferrari, there should be no surprise in that, because both bodies were designed by Piero Drogo. The Bizzarrini seems impossibly low and long, stretched like liquorice into a shape not just with a belly-scraping centre of gravity but also a Mulsanne-friendly long tail. It is a fascinating design, perhaps not quite as obviously drop dead gorgeous as a 250 SWB or GTO (both of which were Giotto Bizzarrini’s responsibility before he left Ferrari in a huff in 1962 to join the ill-starred ATS programme), but still fascinating, captivating and unforgettable.

It is actually a spin-off of another no less gorgeous machine, the ISO Rivolta, the first product of the association between Bizzarrini the man and Renzo Rivolta and designed by a young Giorgetto Giugiaro in his fledgling days at Bertone. But the Rivolta was a luxury GT and while Renzo could see space for a more sporting derivative, Giotto wanted a race car. So they did both and the ISO Grifo was the result, the A3/L for street use, the Drogo-built A3/C for the track.

As mentioned earlier, the Bizzarrini 5300GT is essentially an A3/C by another name and today’s car has been designed using original blueprints with even some original component suppliers coming on board. The attention to detail is stunning. As was often the case with ultra-low volume Italian race cars of the era, they tended to vary in appearance not just from car to car, but from race to race too, so RML has paid assiduous attention to details including the precise angle of the door handles to recreate the car in the exact image of chassis 0222 as it competed at Le Mans. It is however rather better built.

Once you’ve turned on the fuel pumps and ignition, you need a squirt or two of throttle before the big Chevy motor rumbles into life. There is so much reassurance in the knowledge that this is one of the most robust engines ever designed, far more so than Ford’s rival motor let alone the Italian V12 exotica you might expect to find under the bonnet of such a car. And in what is actually quite a leisurely state of tune for a small block these days, basic maintenance aside, an owner knows he or she should never need to put a spanner on it or, for that matter, the truck-like Borg-Warner gearbox.

Today we’re on the quite tight handling circuit at the Millbrook Proving Ground which feels a little like putting a race horse on a dog track, but there’s still enough of interest here to get a proper feel for the machinery. Indeed, the gearing is so long we don’t even need fourth.

There is torque everywhere: no need to wait for its climb onto the cam or anything like that, because from around 2,500rpm to the 6,500rpm we’re using as a sensible limit, it just goes. Hard. Even with the engine developing substantially less power than is possible, the Bizzarrini has the power to weight ratio of a brand-new Porsche 911 GT3, which gives you some idea of the potential under your right foot. It doesn’t quite feel hypercar fast, but by the standard ascribed to any normal road car, it is one of the fastest of the fast. And the sound is the purest Detroit thunder, perhaps not quite as able to itch the skin like a Lamborghini V12 (designed by, you guessed it, Giotto Bizzarrini) but at least as capable of stirring the soul.

But it is the chassis of the car that makes you realise just how advanced it was in period. I’ve been lucky enough to drive most cars that might consider it to be a rival – a Shelby Daytona Cobra and Ferrari 250 GTO among them – and the Bizzarrini enjoys a different level of sophistication. Thanks to the weight distribution of its essentially mid-engined design and the ability of its all-round double wishbone suspension, it handles like a far more modern car than it actually is. It’s not, for example, the kind of car where you progress from entry to apex to exit in one long drift; it’s not a car that instinctively wants to go sideways, it wants to go forward and fast. The balance is resolutely neutral, traction the best I’ve known in a car of this type. The question it leaves hanging on the lips is not why it did so well at Le Mans in 1965, but why it didn’t do even better. There was a Daytona Coupe one place ahead at the finish of the race but I suspect that had as much to do with the fact Jack Sears was driving it than any inherent competitive advantage in the car’s performance.

Today that matters only insofar as it reveals the car’s character: a real racing car with simply enormous potential.

It’s easier to get into the 5300GT than its ultra-low-slung appearance might suggest. The door opens wide enough for you to drop down into the seat and haul your legs in after you. The steering wheel is much too far away in typical Italianate style, but RML will provide the spacer on the column to rectify this problem. Visibility ahead and to the side is reasonable, but very limited over the shoulder.

What is bizarre is that at some point in the early 1960s someone took the decision to place the small dials registering water and oil temperature plus oil pressure right in front of you where you want them to be, but the rev-counter and speedometer in front of your passenger where you absolutely do not want to find them. At race speed this renders the former almost completely useless, so you have little choice but to change by ear.  

One of the initially curious things about the Bizzarrini in 1965 is that on paper it should have been the class of its field, because it had everything that was required to beat the cream of the then GT crop, namely the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe. It had a bigger engine, a 5.3-litre Chevy versus a 4.7-litre Ford, and doubtless a more reliable one too. The car was light, certainly no heavier than the Cobra, and, for Le Mans at least, had coil sprung truly independent suspension at all four corners which ought to have been somewhat better than the Cobra with its transverse leaves. It’s so well balanced, it places precisely 25 per cent of its weight on each tyre.

The engine is set so far back in the chassis there’s room for another of the same size in front of it. It’s derived from the Corvette of that era and is a small block, pushrod V8 breathing through four twin choke, 45mm Weber DCOE carbs just as it would in period. As standard the engine produces around 400PS (294kW), which is what it would have raced with in period, but those wishing to be competitive today will want RML to supply a full race unit which today develops a rather punchier 480PS (353kW). Come what may, the gearbox is a Borg Warner T-10 transmission with four necessarily widely spaced ratios covering a speed range of zero to nearly 200mph.

Its construction method is clever, too. Its chassis frame being gifted enormous additional torsional rigidity by having its body bonded to it.

It’s not for me to say whether a Bizzarrini 5300 GT Revival Corsa 24/65 (to give it its full name) is worth the £1.65 million asked for it. The proof will be in how many are sold. But is it an honest evocation of a fast, beautiful and sorely under-rated racing car? You bet. The only differences that exist between this car and the original are simple common sense and concern only issues of build quality or safety. Otherwise, they are the same.

So that’s the historical perspective. But there’s another consideration here which is simply whether the car beneath those lines can cash the cheque written by its stunning appearance, and it absolutely can. It’s not one of those cars you can just look at and instinctively know how it will drive, because it looks like it should have a highly strung V12 under the bonnet and go everywhere accompanied by varying degrees of opposite lock. It is not like that at all. Instead, it is a massively capable, admirable and impressive machine which would be just as comfortable doing on-road events (RML can adapt it to pass IVA type approval so it can be registered for road use) as track days which is how Bizzarrini believe most of these will be used. Me? I’d just race it. For something like the Spa Six Hours, there’s almost nothing I’d rather be driving.

Photography by Sam Chick.